As We Wander
by Yeahsureyoubetcha
Summary: All who wander are not lost... and then, there are those other people. (Early Team/Friendship fic)


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of _Stargate SG-1_... something my muse has yet to accept.

Time frame: Early season 1. No spoilers.

Author's Note: I'd like to give a big shout-out to my dear friend, Noxbait! Without her support and amazing story prompt, this little bit of nonsense never would have happened. And also a big thank you to DamonsGirl92, whose penchant for flinging characters off of cliffs when they misbehave inspired an entire alien culture. ;)

Also, a huge thank you to my amazing Beta lbindner. You rock!

* * *

Teal'c assessed the desert landscape of P5C-681 from his and Captain Carter's latest position.

"What do you think, Teal'c?"

"I believe the inhabitants of this planet are extremely fond of repetition."

Captain Carter grinned. "Thirty-seven ziggurats _is_ a bit much."

"Indeed." Arching his eyebrow, Teal'c scrutinized the electronic device in Captain Carter's hand. "Have you been able to determine the source of the abnormal energy signature?"

"No. The triangulation should have worked, I don't know what's wrong. It's like it keeps repositioning somehow. But if that's the case, we should be able to detect the change in positions as they happen."

"I have observed no anomalous movements."

"Yeah, me neither." With a sigh, Captain Carter lowered the device and squinted at the horizon. "This place gives new meaning to the word abandoned, doesn't it?"

"Was the former meaning not appropriately descriptive of this planet's lack of habitation?"

A somewhat guilty expression passed over Captain Carter's face before she again smiled. "Sorry, Teal'c. That's just something we say on earth when—"

" _Carter, Teal'c, come in."_

Immediately, Captain Carter keyed her radio. "This is Carter. How's it going, sir?"

" _I'm forty minutes deep into a ziggurat, Carter. With Daniel."_

The answer struck Teal'c as distinctly uninformative, but rich in sentiment.

It made Captain Carter grin. "Glad things are going well, sir."

" _Oh, they're ju_ — _pea_ — _Ca_ — _er."_

"Sir? Sir, you're breaking up." Captain Carter freed her radio from its harness and began making adjustments. "Sir, do you copy?"

" _Yeah, I_ — _we're losing sig_ —"

"They must be getting into some kind of interference," Captain Carter said. She keyed her transmitter again. "Sir, we can barely hear you."

This time it was the voice of Daniel Jackson who responded. " _Y_ — _we just reached_ — _end of the main shaft. The walls se_ — _made of_ — _different. I don't think_ — _can penetrate it."_

"Continuing without some form of communication may prove hazardous," Teal'c said. "Should they not exit the ziggurat?"

"Yes, they probably should," Captain Carter agreed. "But whether or not they will…"

Fragments of an argument filtered across the radio interspersed with blips of static. There was a brief stretch of silence, then, " _How's everyth_ — _on your end, Carter?"_

"We're good, sir. The area is secure."

" _Copy that. Dan_ — _to keep going, so_ — _Shouldn't take more than_ — _hours. Anything comes up, dial home."_

"Sir, all due respect, but are you sure? What if you and Daniel run into trouble?"

" _Don't worry, Capt_ — _The map will_ — _from here on in. It's just a creepy, giant, alien ziggurat, right? What could possibly_ — _wrong?"_

Captain Carter seemed to take little comfort from O'Neill's words, but hesitated to respond.

Teal'c, therefore, depressed his transmit key. "If your intention was to encourage us, O'Neill, you have failed."

" _We're good, Teal'c."_ O'Neill sounded as though he were laughing as he said it, but he also sounded sincere. " _Stay sharp an_ — _catch ya' in a few."_

"I have no intention of falling, O'Neill," Teal'c replied.

Captain Carter covered her mouth with a hand and proceeded to cough at length.

" _Ah! Yes. Excellent. Um, okay, then. O'Neill out."_

* * *

Daniel looked over the ancient map in his hands and listened to Jack fumble his way out of the conversation with Teal'c. As warriors, the two of them seemed to understand each other on a deep, almost intrinsic level. It was a shame they spoke two completely different versions of the English language. "You might want to shy away from the colloquialisms, Jack," he said absently.

"O'Neills never run, Daniel. Especially from colloquialisms."

The correct pronunciation betrayed Jack's show of ignorance, and Daniel smiled. Eyes still on the map, he recited, "Those who fight and run away, live to colloquial another day."

"Sometimes I worry about your brain," Jack muttered and snatched the map out of Daniel's hand.

"Hey!"

"No, no, no." Jack swept the map higher into the air. "You do not get to navigate."

"What? Jack, I've been navigating ever since we got down here."

"Yes. And you did great. Never would've made it down that long, straight hallway without you."

Daniel huffed, collected himself, then lunged forward as Jack started to lower the map.

"Ack!"

Chest connecting solidly with Jack's back, Daniel bobbed onto his toes as he strained to reach the elusive prize. His fingers had just brushed the parchment when Jack twisted and broke away. "Jack—"

"Nope. Sorry, Daniel. We're getting into the twisty-turny part, and call me boring, but I'd rather not get navigated off of a cliff today."

Daniel waved his arms wide. "When have I ever—"

"Two words Daniel: O'Llien Nemrac."

"That was…"

"Uh huh, it certainly was."

"Okay, so maybe it was," Daniel conceded. "But I just asked them to take us to their sacred burial grounds. How was I supposed to know they buried their ancestors that way?"

"Cliff flinging, a famous old Nemrac-ian custom."

"Well none of the Native American cultures on Earth buried their ancestors that way."

"Gotta keep up with the times, Danny." Shining his flashlight on the battered map, Jack cocked his head.

"You've got it upside down."

"I know." Jack shot him a look that somehow managed to be both offended and embarrassed.

Crossing his arms, Daniel shrugged. "I just mentioned it because it sort of makes the Sumerian cuneiform hard to read. Oh, wait! You can't read Sumerian cuneiform."

Another look, this one decidedly sour.

"Jack, come on, just let me—"

"No."

"What? A guy can't make one mistake?"

Jack held up two fingers. "Two. Two mistakes."

"What two?"

"Puget Sound Naval Base."

Daniel set his stance wide and rolled his eyes. "There were no cliffs inside that base, Jack."

"Which makes getting lost so much better?"

Daniel sighed. "So I got a little turned around, that doesn't—"

"A little? Took me twenty minutes to find you, and that was after you finally broke down and called me for help."

"And this qualifies you to lead us through a ziggurat how exactly?"

Shaking his head, Jack stubbornly moved off down the corridor, map now turned on its side.

Daniel hurried after him. "Jack, believe me: if I were trying to find my way through another naval base, you would be the first one I'd call, but this is completely different! I know what I'm doing. Please, will you just—" Daniel made another grab for the map, this time reaching under Jack's arm from behind. His hand latched onto the bottom corner of the parchment at the same time Jack snatched it upward.

The brittle, heartbreaking sound of aged paper being ripped made Daniel freeze. It stopped Jack, too, but not before the map was hanging in two very disproportionate pieces.

Daniel looked down at all two inches of the corner he'd managed to claim.

"Now see what you did?" Jack examined the torn edge of his own piece with a frown.

Daniel wanted to argue the point, but held his tongue. This was too important, and he was too invested in not getting hopelessly lost. Logic had failed him. So had pleading, sarcasm, and not-so-brute force. Time to switch gears to bargaining. "How about we make a deal? You let me lead for fifteen minutes and if you don't like where we end up, I'll give you back the map no questions asked."

"Daniel, we're in a ziggurat. I'm not gonna like any place we end up."

"See! What've you got to lose?"

"Sorry. Not interested."

Closing his eyes, Daniel silently counted to ten in Greek.

"Can we go now?" Jack asked. "Because I'd like to find the heart of this thing, pluck out that rock you're after, and go home."

"It's a tablet, Jack, with the—"

"Potential meaning of all life, yada-yada." Jack gave his watch a bored look. "Now, are you ready to go or are we gonna have to argue some more?"

Daniel pursed his lips and just glared.

Jack glared back, albeit somewhat warily. He clearly had no clue what was on Daniel's mind. Or perhaps he knew all too well. Either way, he ploughed ahead. "Right. Good. Glad we got that settled."

Without a word, Daniel held up his two inches of the map.

Jack plucked the piece from Daniel's hands. "Thank you."

This time Daniel only mentally counted to five in Greek before answering, "You're not welcome."

Jack just smirked and headed off down the corridor.

* * *

One hour later…

Jack studied the map, then studied the wall staring him in the face. He flipped the map on its head, its side, its back. No matter how he looked at it, he came to the exact same conclusion. "There is no wall here."

"There's not?"

"No, Daniel, there's not." With a growl, Jack spun the map around. "I swear, when we get outta here, I'm going to find whoever is responsible for this pile of rocks and I'm gonna wring their lousy necks."

"Yeah, so you said. Jack, you do realize this ziggurat is well over five thousand years old, right?"

"You do realize I don't care?"

Daniel shut his eyes like he'd just been head-smacked.

And, okay, so maybe he did have a point. Unless they were snakeheads or something, whoever designed this maze of mind-twisting agony was probably dead. So, Jack would set fire to their graves instead of wringing their necks.

"We're lost aren't we?"

"No, Daniel. We are not lost."

"We're not?"

"No."

"Hmm…" Daniel made a show of looking around the tenth dead-end Jack had managed to find. He ran his hand over the wall, examined the resulting coat of dust on his fingers, then brushed it away. "Could have sworn we were lost," he muttered.

"We are not lost."

Daniel took on that inquisitive professor look of his, and oh so reasonably said, "Okay then, you tell me: where are we?"

Jack groaned. Maybe he should just forget his evil plans for the ziggurat designers and wring Daniel's neck instead. He gestured to the stone walls around them. "We're still in the ziggurat, aren't we? How much more 'not lost' do you want?"

"Sorry. Don't know what came over me."

Rolling his eyes, Jack stomped past Daniel back the way they'd come. Daniel's hurried steps thumped along behind him.

"Jack! Jack wait up."

He did. Not because Daniel asked him to, but because he'd just reached the spot in the corridor where it branched off into five different directions and he had no clue which one they should try next. For all the good it did him, he studied the compass on his watch.

Daniel came up beside him. "Look, Jack. Maybe we aren't lost-lost, but don't you think—"

"There's something down here."

"What? Where?"

"No, not something as in _a_ thing," Jack said. "Something as in magnetic interference of some kind. Look." He bent his wrist to give Daniel a better view of his watch. "Notice anything strange about true north?"

Daniel craned his neck and frowned. "Its… moving."

"Spinning is a better word for it, but you got the general idea."

"So, what do we do?"

"Well, we don't use a compass, that's for sure."

"Okay, that sounds like a problem." Daniel dragged the statement out, giving Jack a sidelong look. "What do we do instead?"

"Well, I think all those among us who know how to read… summary unicorns?"

"Sumerian cuneiform."

"Yes. All those among us who can read… _that_ should get their brains in gear and figure out where the heck we are."

Daniel's eyes grew wide. "What? How?"

Jack handed over the map (both pieces of it) with a smirk. "Have at it, Danny boy."

"What about the whole navigating us off of cliffs thing? An- and what happens if I just get us more lost?"

"There are no cliffs in ziggurats, Daniel. And trust me, you can't possibly get us any more lost than we already are."

Daniel grinned at that. Because being told you'd fallen as far off the grid as you could possibly fall was always so encouraging.

Jack smiled back, leaned against the wall, and fluttered a hand in Daniel's direction. "Take your time."

Had he known Daniel would take those words so closely to heart, he never would have uttered them.

* * *

Two hours later…

"Daniel."

"Yes, Jack?"

"Are you done yet?"

"No, I'm not," Daniel answered patiently. "This isn't exactly easy, you know, Jack. The earliest forms of Sumerian cuneiform can be highly abstract. The context alone can completely change its meaning. There are multiple logograms associated with each cuneiform sign, assuming of course that it isn't simply a phonetic representation of—"

"Ack!" Jack groaned, rubbing the heels of his hands into his temples. "Daniel?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"Shut up."

Daniel scanned a page of Notizia and Visicato's _Early Dynastic and Early Sargonic Texts,_ then quickly flipped to the index. "You're the one who asked."

"Sorry. Lost my head."

"Something else we may never find," Daniel muttered to himself.

"What was that, Daniel?"

"Nothing." Forcing a smile, Daniel waved a vague hand over his pile of books. "Just trying to translate here."

Jack eyed him suspiciously, but didn't push.

Daniel went back to translating and for a few seconds all was silent.

The snatch of a Velcro flap shattered the moment, followed soon after by the rhythmic swish-hiss of Jack's yo-yo.

Daniel kept a sharper check on his tongue this time and did not mention how much easier it had been to concentrate without the yo-yo soundtrack. Hunching over his work, he simply tried to block it all out. But by the time Jack had run through his fifth variation of Rocking the Baby and almost taken out his own eye with a poorly executed Around the World, Daniel was seriously regretting his decision. "Jack!"

The painful thwack of a speeding yo-yo connecting with human flesh echoed in the chamber. Jack yelped, then cursed. " _What_?"

"Sorry."

Jack exhaled, fingers rubbing absently at his thigh. "What is it, Daniel?"

"Um… I think we may have a problem."

"Another one?"

"Yeah." Daniel winced at the admission and held up the map. "I, ah, finished the translation, well most of it, and…"

"And what?"

"And… I think we've got the wrong map."

With an aggravated flap of his arms, Jack said, "Of course, we do."

"I mean, I'm not certain, but according to this there should be—"

"Yeah, whatever," Jack grumbled. "Let's just go."

"Go where? Jack, we don't have a compass and now we don't have a map. Where do we even start?"

Jack propped his hands on his hips and gave the corridors a critical look. "That one'll do."

"What? Jack, you can't just pick a shaft at random. This thing is huge." Daniel looked desperately around the barren corridor. "We need to have some kind of system, a plan or, or something."

"I do have a plan."

"You have a plan?"

"Yes, I have a plan." Cocking his head with a grin, Jack clapped Daniel lightly on the shoulder. "Pack it up, Doctor Jackson. Let's move."

"Am I going to like this plan?"

Jack shrugged, but it was the slightly mischievous tilt of his eyebrows that made Daniel start to panic.

Shoving his stack of references into his pack with less care than he normally would have exercised, Daniel clambered to his feet. "Jack!"

"Right here, Daniel. Don't have to shout."

"Jack, what are we about to do?"

Smile still tacked in place, Jack grabbed Daniel's pack and made a circling motion with his fingers.

Daniel turned around, giving Jack access to his back. A few sharp clicks, and his pack was efficiently locked in place. "Jack, what are we about to do?" he repeated.

"We," Jack said, "are going to get out of here."

"Okay. And how exactly are we going to do that?"

Jack smiled again. "Together."

Nothing like a detailed plan. But Daniel didn't bother to raise an objection. He just smiled back, and found himself saying, "I can work with that."

* * *

Three hours later…

Sam shifted on her feet. Teal'c stood beside her and together they'd managed to pass the last several minutes in companionable silence. But the longer they stood, the more anxious she became. The Colonel and Daniel should have been back by now.

It had taken her and Teal'c the better part of the afternoon to determine that the ziggurats themselves were responsible for the erratic energy signal. They'd spent an hour gathering samples of the stones and the mortar to take back through the Stargate for analysis, then packed up the MALP, reported to General Hammond, and sat down to wait.

And wait.

Sam scanned the horizon. The planet's twin moons had begun to rise, while its sun insisted on sinking ever lower in the sky. She bit her lip.

"Are you concerned, Captain Carter?" Teal'c asked.

Sam paced the length of the main ziggurat's lowest stair. "They've been in there for over six hours."

"Traversing a structure of this size can be most tedious."

There was something to that, but she had estimated the time it would take to reach the center of the ziggurat based on the map Daniel had unearthed. Three hours, four at the most, had been her guess. _Round-trip_.

"One must also consider that Daniel Jackson accompanied O'Neill into the ziggurat," Teal'c said.

Sam frowned. "What has that got to do with it?"

"Daniel Jackson can be hesitant to leave places of architectural and historical interest in a timely fashion."

In spite of herself, Sam snorted. "Well, there is that."

The echo of a shout coming from within the ziggurat made Sam spin around. She exchanged a glance with Teal'c, then took the stairs two at a time. Teal'c paced her.

They were still about ten steps below the entrance when the Colonel emerged. Coated in a fine layer of dust, eyes squinting against the sunlight, he pumped both fists. "Yes!"

Sam bounded up the last few steps. "Colonel!"

"Hello, Captain. Did you miss us?"

Before she could answer, Daniel appeared. He immediately cupped a hand over his glasses and let out a cry that was half-relief, half-distress.

The Colonel surveyed the archaeologist up and down. "Everything okay there, Daniel?"

"Great. You?" Tilting his head back, Daniel peeked out from beneath his hand. He gave the Colonel an appraising glance, then seemed to notice Sam and Teal'c for the first time. "Oh, hi."

"It is good to see you, Doctor Jackson," Teal'c replied.

"It's good to see you both," Sam said. "Sir, what happened?"

"Happened?" The Colonel said the word with innocence as he raked his hands through his hair. When the resulting plume of dust made Daniel sneeze, he shot the archaeologist a look. "Bless."

Daniel sniffed. "Thank you."

"You have been gone an extremely long time, O'Neill," Teal'c said, getting them all back on the point.

Swiping at his nose with his bandanna, Daniel sniffed again. "We, ah, ran into a little snag. A couple of little snags actually."

Sam didn't like the sound of that. "What kind of snags?"

"Oh, you know, Carter. The usual. Shall we go?" The Colonel made a move for the stairs, but encountered Teal'c (who apparently had no intention of stepping aside) and was forced to stop.

"Are you not going to inform us of the difficulties you encountered, O'Neill?"

The Colonel opened his mouth, closed it again, then turned to Daniel.

Shoulders falling with a sigh, Daniel said, "Let's just say true north took on a mind of its own, and having a map for the ziggurat that _used_ to be here isn't very helpful."

Sam processed those bits of information for a moment, mind searching for potential solutions — none presented themselves. "How did you get out?"

"By the highest, most scientific, and precise method we had at our disposal, Captain," the Colonel answered.

"Which was?"

The lofty smirk on the Colonel's face faltered slightly and he once again glanced at Daniel. "I don't know that I can reveal that, Carter. It's..."

"Classified." Daniel grinned flatly, arms crossing over his chest.

"Yes! Yes, that's… very true."

"Do Captain Carter and I not have the same security clearance as you and Doctor Jackson?"

"Need to know basis here, T. Need to know."

"And trust me, you do not want to know," Daniel muttered.

"Daniel! Sir, what did the two of you do?"

The Colonel groaned, his gaze rolling off toward Daniel for a third time. They stared at one another, exchanged a series of shrugs and pointed looks.

Sam was on the verge of throttling them both, when Daniel finally spoke up.

"Seventy-two rounds of shoushiling."

The Colonel's head snapped up at that. "Really?"

Daniel nodded. "Really."

"Cool."

"I am unfamiliar with this term," Teal'c declared.

"Yes, well," Daniel rubbed furiously at the back of his neck. "It's actually an ancient algorithmic method dating back to the Han Dynasty of China used to make an appropriate determination when multiple factors of choice and opinion are involved."

The Colonel's head came up again. "Really?"

"Really."

Closing her eyes for a beat, Sam shook her head. "Daniel, what is shoushiling?"

The neck rubbing started up again, accompanied by a flush of bright red on his ears. "It's, uh, Rock Paper Scissors."

The words were mumbled, and it took Sam a solid five seconds to decide that she'd really just heard what she thought she'd heard. _Rock Paper Scissors?_ She mouthed the words, staring in shock at Teal'c.

The imperturbable Jaffa tilted his head. "I am unfamiliar with this method as well."

"It's a game children use to make decisions, Teal'c. _Children_." Sam turned back to Daniel and the Colonel in disbelief. Because there was no way two grown men she respected had just spent the past six hours wandering around a ziggurat playing seventy-two rounds of Rock Paper Scissors. There just wasn't.

The Colonel seemed to sober under her incredulous gaze. He cleared his throat, rubbed at his own neck, and for the fourth time looked at Daniel, who just shook his head and started to laugh. A boyish smirk tugged at the Colonel's mouth. "Let's go home, Carter."

With that, he moved past Teal'c and led the way down the stairs.

Teal'c arched his eyebrow to an impressive height, but followed without protest.

Daniel, who was still randomly snorting with suppressed laughter, trailed along behind him.

Sam stared after them all, disbelief rapidly shifting into exasperation. Exhaling with a huff, she set off down the stairs. "Sir, please tell me you were kidding… Sir?"

But her shout was met with nothing more than another round of laughter.

THE END

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much for taking the time to read this ridiculous tale. I hope you enjoyed it!

Also, for anyone interested in learning more about Summary Unicorns, the book Daniel references is real and is available on Amazon for purchase. The full title is: _Early Dynastic and Early Sargonic Texts Mainly from the Umma Region in the Cornell University Cuneiform Collections (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology),_ by Palmiro Notizia and Giuseppe Visicato. You're welcome.


End file.
